Working From Home? Learn From the Mistakes I’ve Made.

Confession time: I’ve been in the advertising and writing business for over 20 years, and I have always been a full-time, on-site employee. This meant regular hours (or crazy ones in the early London days), a routine, and a delineation between work and home.

When I started freelancing a few months ago, all that changed. I was no longer working an eight to five job. No more rush hour commute. Everything just started blending together, and not in a good way.

During those first few months, I screwed up. A lot. But as the great Bram Stoker once said, “we learn from failure, not from success.” It taught me a lot about myself, and what I needed to change to make this new role a success. So whether you’re just starting out on this work-from-home journey, or have been struggling to make a go of it, I hope my stumbles help you take great strides.

1: Do Not Underestimate the Importance of Routine

When you start working for yourself, you immediately think of all the ways this is better than “working for the man.” Stay up late, wake up late, eat whenever, work three days a week, take really long weekends, and what the hell, give yourself four weeks off for summer.

Well, yeah, maybe one day. But not until you’ve earned it. I’m a huge fan of the four-hour workweek, but it doesn’t happen overnight. You have to put in the hard work first, and that means during the year(s) you’re establishing your work-from-home business, you need structure.

While it’s tempting to wake up at noon and clock off at 4pm, this is not going to stand you in good stead. The seeds you plant now take time to grow, and you need to be planting a lot. So set a schedule that you can stick to until the fruits of your labor start paying off.

Get up at 8am, make breakfast, then dive in. Take a break for lunch. Work until 5pm. Work later if you have to. You’re going to need strong willpower, because the boss who used to come down on you for being late or slacking off is gone. Now you’re the boss. Act like it.

2: Do Not Give In to That Tempting Bed

A good freelancer friend of mine, who’s steered right me during this new chapter of my life, told me something I thought a little throwaway at first. Basically, when he gets up every morning one of the first thing he does is make the bed. “Ummm…ok,” I thought.

It wasn’t some strange quirk or OCD habit. He did it because once you’ve made that bed, you’re way less likely to dive back into it. And trust me, when the alarm goes off at 7:30am, it’s pouring down outside, and you have no boss or immediate deadlines, it’s easy to crawl back under the covers.

The late great comedian Bill Hicks once said of an old job he had, “sir, you’re lucky I turned up today…my bed was like a womb.” Oh, how right he was.

Don’t give in to the slumber. Get up, make the bed, and get on with the day.

3: Do Not Blur the Lines of Work and Home Life

If you’re lucky enough to have the space for a nice home office, or can afford to rent out a space in a community workplace, you’re in great shape.

If your home office is more like a broom closet, or you don’t have one at all, life can get tricky. Some days the thought of spending 8 hours in a room that you’ve only ever used to pay bills and shred papers can be a nightmare; especially if it doesn’t have a window.

Worse still, what if there’s no office? That means you’re at the kitchen table, the bedroom, or in the living room. These are all spaces you associate with leisure time. In some respects, it’s like working on a TPS report whilst getting a massage. It just doesn’t work.

Do whatever you can to differentiate work life from home life now that the two co-exist. Maybe you need to put up room dividers to keep the living room out of your sight. Or you have set times when you cannot work at the table. Your personal space is important, and you can grow to resent the home you love.

When you’re always at work, you’re never really at home.

4: Do Not Forget the Outside World

I did.

I don’t just mean physically going outside, but also the existence of friends and colleagues. In my previous job, they were a 10-second walk from my office. Now, they’re at least a 30-minute drive (yeah…I live far from the madding crowd).

So I’d sit at my desk, keep sporadic hours at best, and try my hardest not to let the walls close in. I should add I’m a divorced dad, and I see my kids one evening a week and at weekends. Most of the working week it was me, the cats, and dark thoughts.

I’d go out on the mountain bike now and again, walk the block, maybe take five in my tiny back yard. It’s not enough, trust me. We’re social animals, we need people.

Make an effort to get yourself out there. Be social. Go to happy hours. Even if you work for a company of one, you’re welcome wherever your friends are chilling out. And sure, you may not have a lot to talk about when it comes to work…but do we really need to keep talking about work anyway?

5: Do Not Give Up

It almost broke me.

The freelancing career was not one I chose, but one that was imposed by a restructure. Sure, I’d seen it coming, and had already made some efforts to start reaching out, but this was a sledgehammer life change.

During those first months, I wrote hundreds of emails and messages. I sent out mailers. I went into chat rooms and started mixing things up on apps like Fishbowl. The result: tumbleweeds. It was soul-destroying.

As Winston Churchill said, “when you’re going through hell, keep going.”

It can be really tough to stay positive, and even tougher to fend off the inner demons telling you it’s never going to happen.

It will. It may take longer than you wanted. I know it’s taken way longer than I thought it would to get this locomotive chugging along. But perseverance wins the day.

6: Do Not Neglect Yourself

Your health, both physical and mental, is paramount now. You can have bad days, weeks, or even months at a regular job. You can phone it in sometimes. You can be running along at 50% and still do ok.

On your own, that’s a recipe for disaster. You need to be sharp, fit, and ready for action. You have to be proactive, and jump out of bed ready to conquer the world.

If you’re eating crap food, drinking way too much alcohol, forgetting to stay active, and showering twice a week because “what the hell, no one sees me anyway” you’re going to suffer. And remember, you're paying for your own sick days now (and more than likely, your own healthcare plan).

You don’t have to become The Rock, but try to keep a balance. Eat well. Drink less. Get out of the house regularly to walk, run, or cycle. Get on the rowing machine. And keep yourself well-groomed. It does wonders for your self esteem when you’re not staring at some smelly unwashed bum in the hallway mirror.

7: Do Not Give in to Distractions

At work, they’re few and far between. At home…you’re surrounded.

The big screen TV with the huge movie collection. The vinyl classics you haven’t played in ages. The fridge beckoning you for another snack. The garage, which could really use a good old tidy. Oh, and maybe pull those weeds and mow the lawn?

I swear, I never thought I had an attention span issue until I started working from home full time. Those first few months it was a constant battle between the scrawny angel on my shoulder telling me to get to work, and the swole devil reminding me it’s been a good six months since I watched The Godfather trilogy. With a bourbon. And a curry.

You can do all of those things of course, but allocate the right time. You wouldn’t put your feet up at 2pm in the office and call it a day in front of The IT Crowd reruns. Don’t do it at home.

Well, there you have it. My first few months of failure, laid bare. I got through it, I’m better for it, and it was one hell of a learning experience. If this helps you, great. I hope my embarrassing revelations will do some good.

If you checked out half way through to play a few hours of Battlefield, well hey, you’re only human. And let’s face it, this advice can’t compete with Xbox One action. Which reminds me…